120 - Mediated Transcendence: A Postmodern Reflection

Mediated Transcendence: A Postmodern Reflection

By Jerry H. Gill

Macon, Georgia, Mercer University Press, 1989. 155 Pp. $17.50.

The problematic of Gill's essay is the seeming loss and possible recovery of transcendence. His solution is to retrace our steps to see where Western thought has derailed itself either by falling into a traditional dualism or a contemporary naturalism and then to weave a comprehensive postmodern fabric of thought combining the strength of both while avoiding their weaknesses. Specifically, he proposes a notion of mediated transcendence by which he means that intangible reality is encountered always and only through tangible reality.

Reality is seen as a hierarchy of interpenetrating dimensions (not realms) structured according to degrees of richness and comprehensiveness. Three of the most humanly important are the noetic, the moral, and the linguistic. Transcendence is more than these but not other than (apart from) them.

A product of Gill's mature thought, this essay is rich and suggests how postmodern persons can lay claim meaningfully to transcendence without denying the particularities of concrete reality.

J. Harley Chapman, William Rainey Harper College, Palatine, Illinois